Republican and Democratic Louisiana lawmakers are considering reforms to justice of the peace courts after a Guardian investigation into the filing fees that fund them. Justices receive compensation directly from that income. More cases can mean more money for the person hearing the cases.

An unusual arrangement for a public service whose ideal customer experience is never needing to come back.

We generally want a judge to resolve a dispute, not experience the bittersweet professional disappointment of watching two people reconcile.

One justice, Chuck Cusimano II, earned more than $400,000 in 2025, mostly from eviction filing fees. His court processed more than 5,500 eviction filings from June 2025 through May 2026. Those are filings, not 5,500 completed evictions.

Cusimano denies that repeat landlord filings create a built-in conflict. Landlords pay regardless of the outcome, he says. He attributes his caseload to the number of apartments in the area and defends the work he does.

The fee does not buy a verdict. It enters the till when the case arrives. Louisiana has not attached the meter to the decision; it has attached it to the queue and would apparently like us to admire the distance between them.

I understand the distinction. I would still prefer the judge’s income not share a business plan with the turnstile.

Imagine explaining this funding model to a retail consultant. The consultant gets as far as recurring customers, raises one finger and starts recommending loyalty points. Then somebody has to explain that this is a court and the people on the other side of the transaction may lose their homes.

The consultant slowly lowers the finger. An encouraging response. Could we get that person a seat in the meeting where Louisiana reconsiders the arrangement?

The Daily Heckler: five or six selected stories.
Political satire for your morning inbox.

Republican representative Jerome Zeringue is considering legislation addressing compensation and minimum standards. Justices of the peace are not required to be licensed lawyers. Democratic lawmakers are also questioning the financial incentives and impartiality of the system. No reform has become law in this reporting.

So the job can involve deciding legal disputes without a law license, while the pay depends on business coming through the door. Somewhere a career counselor is taking off her glasses and asking whether anyone checked that these were the instructions for the same job.

This is not an allegation that every justice has ruled improperly. It is an objection to a state-designed arrangement that makes an empty waiting room potentially bad for the income of the person wearing the robe.

An empty waiting room! In a court! That ought to be delightful. People have resolved their differences. Nobody needs a hearing. Put the kettle on. Why must there also be a small accounting voice asking whether conflict is down this quarter?

Who put that voice in there? Who looked at impartial justice and thought, yes, but can we make it a little more dependent on volume?

The people facing eviction are not the joke. They are the reason it is so grotesque to find a familiar business-growth mechanism humming underneath the bench. Their housing problem should not have a second identity as somebody else’s healthy pipeline.

And now legislators from both parties are considering changes. Good. We have reached the point where a Republican and a Democrat can look at the same compensation structure and agree that perhaps a courthouse shouldn't require the emotional discipline of a shopkeeper trying to celebrate a slow Saturday.

Take the fucking sales counter out of the pay formula.

If nobody needs a hearing today, I want the judge to think “good,” not “we should really get on Instagram.”